With the addition of Markup into our Evernote projects, we have started to take Skitch in a new direction and let it be Skitch. There have been a lot of changes to this version which I'll just hit highlights here:

Skitch iOS 3.0 is iOS 7 only and takes advantage of new iOS 7 features

A new brand and look for Skitch

We've added a streamlined mode that lets you take a snap make quick common annotations and send it along

We've redesigned the flow so you only need to login when you save to Evernote

You can now open pictures from your local photo roll, stream, or from your clipboard

New toolbar design that lets you focus on your content. Drag your fingers along the menus to use Skitch with one hand

Add captions to help explain your image

Send to meeting attendees. Skitch detects what meetings your in and lets you send annotations to attendees.

Tons of bug fixes

Skitch 3.0 for iOS represents a new direction toward making a faster, more streamlined experience focused on letting you markup your content and then sending it to where-ever you need it to go.

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And it appears that a newly created Skitch note can be saved in Evernote and may later be edited with Skitch with the very big exception that the initial Skitch notations cannot be moved, resized or otherwise edited. Is that correct?

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You can use Skitch to capture an annotate anything quickly while on the fly. Saving it over to Evernote, will save a full editable image that can be changed using the Markup tools in Evernote, or a desktop version of Skitch.

You can also send these same images via email (actual size) to a friend and they can edit the annotations as well.

PDFs have temporarily been removed. We're still trying to judge how many people want Skitch to do PDF annotations vs. using Markup in Evernote.

We don't view this as an either/or issue between Skitch or Evernote. Both apps have amazing features and functions, and both serve two different purposes. If Markup inside of Evernote meets your needs, then awesome; If you need something lightweight and fast like Skitch to take a quick snap then awesome as well.

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You can use Skitch to capture an annotate anything quickly while on the fly. Saving it over to Evernote, will save a full editable image that can be changed using the Markup tools in Evernote, or a desktop version of Skitch.

You can also send these same images via email (actual size) to a friend and they can edit the annotations as well.

PDFs have temporarily been removed. We're still trying to judge how many people want Skitch to do PDF annotations vs. using Markup in Evernote.

We don't view this as an either/or issue between Skitch or Evernote. Both apps have amazing features and functions, and both serve two different purposes. If Markup inside of Evernote meets your needs, then awesome; If you need something lightweight and fast like Skitch to take a quick snap then awesome as well.

You did not address that Skitch notes can no longer be accessed via the Skitch app on iOS (say, a screenshot from your desktop). Has this been temporarily removed as well, or is this for good?

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You can use Skitch to capture an annotate anything quickly while on the fly. Saving it over to Evernote, will save a full editable image that can be changed using the Markup tools in Evernote, or a desktop version of Skitch.

You can also send these same images via email (actual size) to a friend and they can edit the annotations as well.

PDFs have temporarily been removed. We're still trying to judge how many people want Skitch to do PDF annotations vs. using Markup in Evernote.

We don't view this as an either/or issue between Skitch or Evernote. Both apps have amazing features and functions, and both serve two different purposes. If Markup inside of Evernote meets your needs, then awesome; If you need something lightweight and fast like Skitch to take a quick snap then awesome as well.

Don't you think quite a bit of fuss was made over the introduction of the ability to annotate PDFs for you to take away that capability with no warning or mention?

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@pgdahl - We're still evaluating the removal of the library. Given that everything (including Markup) is available in Evernote, we're watching to see if people prefer Evernote for re-annotating or would like to open up snaps inside of Skitch again. If we bring back opening saved images from Evernote they would be available on the image picker screen that you can bring up from the camera view.

@BasieBand - We gave a lot of thought to this decision and for the time being felt that since Evernote has PDF Markup inside of it now which includes support for PDFs that this would be a better match to our user needs and more align with Skitch and Evernote missions. That said, we are continuing to gather feedback from users with this launch. We have a concept of how to bring PDF back if there is enough demand for Skitch to support this function vs. having it just inside Evernote.

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@pgdahl - We're still evaluating the removal of the library. Given that everything (including Markup) is available in Evernote, we're watching to see if people prefer Evernote for re-annotating or would like to open up snaps inside of Skitch again. If we bring opening pictures up from within Sktich out of our Evernote account they would be available on the image picker screen that you can bring up from the camera view.

@BasieBand - We gave a lot of thought to this decision and for the time being felt that since Evernote has PDF Markup inside of it now which includes support for PDFs that this would be a better match to our user needs and more align with Skitch and Evernote missions. That said, we are continuing to gather feedback from users with this launch. We have a concept of how to bring PDF back if there is enough demand for Skitch to support this function vs. having it just inside Evernote.

Thanks.

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@pgdahl - We're still evaluating the removal of the library. Given that everything (including Markup) is available in Evernote, we're watching to see if people prefer Evernote for re-annotating or would like to open up snaps inside of Skitch again. If we bring opening pictures up from within Sktich out of our Evernote account they would be available on the image picker screen that you can bring up from the camera view.

Thanks for the clarification.

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@pgdahl - We're still evaluating the removal of the library. Given that everything (including Markup) is available in Evernote, we're watching to see if people prefer Evernote for re-annotating or would like to open up snaps inside of Skitch again. If we bring back opening saved images from Evernote they would be available on the image picker screen that you can bring up from the camera view.

@BasieBand - We gave a lot of thought to this decision and for the time being felt that since Evernote has PDF Markup inside of it now which includes support for PDFs that this would be a better match to our user needs and more align with Skitch and Evernote missions. That said, we are continuing to gather feedback from users with this launch. We have a concept of how to bring PDF back if there is enough demand for Skitch to support this function vs. having it just inside Evernote.

I absolutely love the new skitch. I think the layout is great, and the lack of automatic syncing is a huge plus. I think that it's that lack of syncing that makes the idea of PDF markup in Skitch so appealing. Most times that I'm marking up something, it's not to save but send to someone else. I do like that it's an option inside of Evernote, and use it occasionally, but I would love to just be able to do it inside of Skitch.

Just my thoughts since you mentioned user feedback. All in all though, I love the new skitch and can't wait to see where it goes in the future!

In general I think keeping the pdf editing in skitch is great especially to light user who only need it for several occasion. Most importantly, the user experience and outcome need to be similar whether you are saving edited pdf from skitch to evernote or doing the editing within evernote.

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I use skitch every day to mark thinks at iOS screenshots and archive them to evernote. Now the workflow for this is horrible and I can not access the screenshots from my camera roll (only some photos are shown without any organisation)!

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The new Skitch is driving me absolutely insane! I use the app extensively for work and this update has DESTROYED ANY VALUE IT ONCE HAD. My workflow with it used to go like this:

1. Open Skitch, take site photos on my iPhone and annotate them

2. Close it and it goes straight to my Skitch library and Evernote. I can choose to email or share if I needed to.

Now, after annotating, I have to click on the Evernote icon in Share to sync it and THEN go into Evernote and click Sync Now repeatedly to make it appear eventually. Do you realise how much my productivity has been hit with this bullshit?

Skitch was useful to me because I can see my annotated photos instantly and can show it to colleagues as well. Now I cannot do that. And what happens if I'm at a site with poor data connectivity? I would then need to save the photo to camera roll, with no possiibiltiy of editing markups.

To add insult to injury, I cannot even get Skitch to save to the Skitch folder in Evernote; they go to the default folder and I would then need to transfer one by one.

You fools have made Skitch worthless to me. Happy now?

Please don't ask me to use Evernote to get around this Skitch problem. It's simply too cumbersome for my workflow. I want to be able to snap, markup and see result without delay. Why couldn't the developers preserve this core competency of Skitch? I'm utterly incensed by this insensitivity to customers' needs.

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I was really pumped when I saw the new icon, and took a couple shots and marked them up with the app. Then I read the blog entry about the new version and realized that none of the changes or markups I'd made were being sync'd back to Evernote or the other Skitch apps.

When you manually push a markup to Evernote, it no longer saves it in the Skitch notebook and isn't directly editable in the desktop version, or at all in the iOS apps. Why would your team think it was a good idea to break such core functionality? I remember when everyone was forced to start using Evernote instead of their own repositories, how upset that made loyal users. Now you've alienated the remaining ones. Nice work.

If I could roll back to the previous version, I would. As it is, it'll probably go unused and deleted unless the core sync functionality is restored.

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I was really pumped when I saw the new icon, and took a couple shots and marked them up with the app. Then I read the blog entry about the new version and realized that none of the changes or markups I'd made were being sync'd back to Evernote or the other Skitch apps.

When you manually push a markup to Evernote, it no longer saves it in the Skitch notebook and isn't directly editable in the desktop version, or at all in the iOS apps. Why would your team think it was a good idea to break such core functionality? I remember when everyone was forced to start using Evernote instead of their own repositories, how upset that made loyal users. Now you've alienated the remaining ones. Nice work.

If I could roll back to the previous version, I would. As it is, it'll probably go unused and deleted unless the core sync functionality is restored.

I just created a Skitch on my iPhone, shared it to Evernote, then right-clicked on the image on my Mac and chose "mark up with Skitch." It opened in Skitch on my Mac and I was able to move around the arrows and text I had added on my phone.

If that's not what you meant by the bolded part, then please explain what you mean.

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We are investigating the Photo Picker to see if we can reproduce failing to load images. Right now we know there is a issue if your photo roll has lots of photos it might fail to update (sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't). We're investigating this for a fix right now.

Thanks for the feedback on PDF. We're continuing to monitor the feedback on PDF and will make a decision next week about bringing it back or leaving the functionality in Evernote only.

We are working on a solution for auto-saving to Evernote. We will probably introduce an option to auto-save (not sync) during the process.

The reason we removed syncing and reviewing of previously annotated notes is our data showed less than 4% of our iOS users every did this, while it is a much higher number for desktop users. We have a design concept for bringing back viewing images in your Evernote account and will consider bringing this feature to production depending upon user requests and use.

All images are now saved as rich Skitch images. So long as you do not compress the images (Email Actual Size, Save to Camera roll, Save to Evernote, Copy & Paste) the image will remain editable in any Evernote or Skitch client by anyone. Actions which compress the image (SMS, Email anything other than Actual Size, Twitter, Facebook, or opening in a 3rd party app the compresses) will flatten the image. Unfortunately we cannot control what a third party app or a share method that requires compression, does to the image. We tried to work around the SMS issue, but there are some hard compression rules in place that we cannot work around in iOS.

We are also evaluating auto-copying to the clipboard a share URL for any note saved to EN. This was not a feature in Skitch 2.x for iOS, but is one we're considering for 3.0.

Maps and web were used by <1% of iOS users, and therefore we focused on the major features used in Skitch. We're doing some R&D on how to make map capture more ueful then it was in 2.x, but as of right now felt that doing a screen snap using the built in Maps and Safari browsers were far superior solutions then what we had in 2.x.

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I just wanted to say I LOVE the new direction of Skitch in particular and Evernote's swallowing of some of Skitch's functionality in general. I don't mind having Evernote as a bit of a "behemoth" of an app as long as the other means of getting stuff into and out of Evernote are light and quick.

Thanks for the great work!

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We are investigating the Photo Picker to see if we can reproduce failing to load images. Right now we know there is a issue if your photo roll has lots of photos it might fail to update (sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't). We're investigating this for a fix right now.

Thanks for the feedback on PDF. We're continuing to monitor the feedback on PDF and will make a decision next week about bringing it back or leaving the functionality in Evernote only.

We are working on a solution for auto-saving to Evernote. We will probably introduce an option to auto-save (not sync) during the process.

The reason we removed syncing and reviewing of previously annotated notes is our data showed less than 4% of our iOS users every did this, while it is a much higher number for desktop users. We have a design concept for bringing back viewing images in your Evernote account and will consider bringing this feature to production depending upon user requests and use.

All images are now saved as rich Skitch images. So long as you do not compress the images (Email Actual Size, Save to Camera roll, Save to Evernote, Copy & Paste) the image will remain editable in any Evernote or Skitch client by anyone. Actions which compress the image (SMS, Email anything other than Actual Size, Twitter, Facebook, or opening in a 3rd party app the compresses) will flatten the image. Unfortunately we cannot control what a third party app or a share method that requires compression, does to the image. We tried to work around the SMS issue, but there are some hard compression rules in place that we cannot work around in iOS.

We are also evaluating auto-copying to the clipboard a share URL for any note saved to EN. This was not a feature in Skitch 2.x for iOS, but is one we're considering for 3.0.

Maps and web were used by <1% of iOS users, and therefore we focused on the major features used in Skitch. We're doing some R&D on how to make map capture more ueful then it was in 2.x, but as of right now felt that doing a screen snap using the built in Maps and Safari browsers were far superior solutions then what we had in 2.x.

I wasn't aware that the editing functionality had been moved into the main Evernote app, and I now see in the iOS app where I can edit previously exported Skitch drawings in Evernote. Adding automatic saving as an option, even if its not default, seems like an acceptable solution and one that wouldn't require an extraordinary amount of effort. Even if only 4% of your users had a workflow and usage similar to mine, I'd be interested to see how we stack up in overall usage compared to perhaps more casual users. Once I discovered Skitch it became one of the most frequently used apps on all platforms, even more so than the main Evernote app.

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Thanks for the feedback on PDF. We're continuing to monitor the feedback on PDF and will make a decision next week about bringing it back or leaving the functionality in Evernote only.

We are working on a solution for auto-saving to Evernote. We will probably introduce an option to auto-save (not sync) during the process.

The reason we removed syncing and reviewing of previously annotated notes is our data showed less than 4% of our iOS users every did this, while it is a much higher number for desktop users. We have a design concept for bringing back viewing images in your Evernote account and will consider bringing this feature to production depending upon user requests and use.

Maps and web were used by <1% of iOS users, and therefore we focused on the major features used in Skitch. We're doing some R&D on how to make map capture more ueful then it was in 2.x, but as of right now felt that doing a screen snap using the built in Maps and Safari browsers were far superior solutions then what we had in 2.x.

I agree that syncing and reviewing of previous notes was something I rarely ever did on my iOS devices, and only occasionally did on my Macs. The decluttering of skitch so that I don't have to deal with it syncing every time I load it is huge. And on the rare occasion that I do need to go back and edit an annotation, I'm fine doing it inside of Evernote anyway. It almost makes it easier to find because I can organize the note in Evernote, whereas with skitch 2.x, it only showed by date created.

I would appreciate the ability to control where in Evernote skitch saves to though. Maybe a quick drop down menu that allows me to select a notebook and add tags before I save it to Evernote. That seems like a great compromise for the people complaining about the lack of syncing and those of us who love it.

So to sum up all of my comments, my ideal skitch would include PDF markup, but not worry about syncing and editing previously made annotations. The auto save feature sounds like a good idea for people who miss syncing though I would not use it. I would prefer to be able to control where individual skitch documents go instead of Evernote though instead of my default notebook, and be able to tag notes if I need to. However, I do not use skitch with such volume that if I have to manually move notes from my default notebook, it's a problem.

I would also prefer selecting what notebook each skitch document goes to instead of having a default skitch notebook like in 2.x. I use skitch for lots of different things. From annotating receipts to marking up a website so my mom can figure out what on the amazon page I actually want for Christmas. I would file these things separately in Evernote, so having the ability to select where they go straight from skitch would be nice.

Again, this is my ideal skitch. 3.x has already gotten us a lot closer to this, and I'm super thankful for all of the work that has gone into making this (free!) app fantastic. Thanks for working hard on this, and being open to listen to user feedback.

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I'm adding my feedback on the new version as well that I think it loses a lot of utility and is a big step backwards.

Like earlier posters, I used to rely on the fact I could access my Skitch'd photos within the app - so I could move between iPad and Desktop very easily.

My workflow was to write presentations and documents in an app like Evernote or Byword, and then I'd use Skitch to grab screenshots for illustration. In my experience, Skitch is much more commonly used for screen shots or documents than it is for 'photos' in the common sense. Don't underestimate the number of people who use 'photos' for screen captures using the power+home button combo and access these from the Photos library.

The removal of the 'copy share url' is also a big loss for me. I used this feature to embed Skitch screenshots within Markdown documents and then export them to PDF or similar with the image embedded.

I fear you'll lose the power users with this limited feature set, who are the best advocates for the Evernote ecosystem.

Luckily, like an earlier poster, I was able to delete the latest update and download a previous version via "not on this iPad". It's asking me to update but I'll be keeping the old version until I see the updated version bring back earlier functionality.

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Hey all thanks for the ongoing feedback. We have another patch in the works that we plan to submit to Apple very soon which will primarily address some photo album picker bugs, but also add in a few other usability fixes.

We have a plan for adding back PDF, especially if there is demand. We probably will roll it out in stages so we can return the functionality and then add some additional pieces to clean up the user experience.

We're going to see how hard it would be to add in the auto-save option for this patch, else it will need to wait till the next update.

Same goes for Notebook picker. We have a design that we're looking at, and could present it both at the time of saving, as well as selecting the default Notebook.

@philsheard - Your workflow makes sense, but I do have a question:

Given that you can still take a screen snap; open it; and then mark up in Skitch and save to Evernote, what about your workflow has changed? If you wan to re-annotate you can open the image up in Evernote and select Markup to re-annotate the image. Are you just trying to stay using Skitch in all cases?

As for copy URL again we may add that as a auto-copy if you save to Evernote. We're still looking into this. While technically not hard to do, with the way we've changed saving to Evernote, Skitch is so fast now that you could save to EN, close the app and go into another one and do that so fast that we wouldn't have time to receive the shared URL.

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Given that you can still take a screen snap; open it; and then mark up in Skitch and save to Evernote, what about your workflow has changed? If you wan to re-annotate you can open the image up in Evernote and select Markup to re-annotate the image. Are you just trying to stay using Skitch in all cases?

As for copy URL again we may add that as a auto-copy if you save to Evernote. We're still looking into this. While technically not hard to do, with the way we've changed saving to Evernote, it is so fast now that you could save to EN, close the app and go into another one and do that so fast that we wouldn't have time to receive the shared URL.

Hey Joe

It might be that I just need to use Evernote and not Skitch - I'll have to try that - but I guess the key thing is that the app has changed and of course couldn't notify me of an alternative workflow and so I perceived it to be a total lack of functionality. That said, maybe a message that explained that some of the functionality had been moved to Evernote would make sense if you do similar things in future. Maybe as a 'more info' option for power users.

The difference between Skitch and Evernote is that in Skitch you are dealing directly with images, without all the Evernote note 'chrome'. I understand that it's there under the hood, but if you're just dealing with images then it's more natural to work within Skitch.

Hope these help flesh out the motivations.

(PS - I'm still not sold on the new iOS7 Evernote yet either although the old app it was an extreme example of skeumorphism with physical notebooks and tabbed filing, I actually think that helps to organise the way you interact with Evernote. The flat design will grow on me in time I'm sure but just a side note).

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@philsheard - Thanks for the feedback. Appreciate your thoughts. We are going to update the first launch screen to add more details about Evernote Markup, and are looking at adding something to the image picker screen as well.

I understand your desire to work simply as that was a big part of of the motivation behind Skitch iOS 3.0. We really wanted to lighten the app and remove the heavy chrome and heavy Evernote experience. Make it flow much smoother and let you decide if you want to save to Evernote or not. Removing the library and sync functionality was part of that equation as it added a lot of overhead to the app. We're considering some ways to bring back a little more of the library experience (perhaps browse images in Evernote) without all of the complexity around syncing. This is very similar to our Windows Desktop version which can read a note, and overwrite an existing note, but it doesn't do full syncing so it has far less complexity.

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I personally would not mind if PDF annotation remained strictly with Evernote, if two critical features were brought back. The PDF annotation in Skitch 2.5 did both of these beautifully. They are:

1. When viewing a PDF and clicking on the annotate button, the PDF document *must remain on the same page*. Skitch did this beautifully. As you know, evernote's PDF annotation features will always open the PDF to the first page. When working with anything other than a document of a few pages in length, this makes the evernote PDF markup features all but unusable.

2. The PDF annotation summary feature. I thought this was an incredible feature of Skitch's PDF marking tools. I used it constantly. Is there any reason why this couldn't be incorporated into Evernote's PDF markup features?

Thanks for your consideration.

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For the ready-to-markup navigation issue, we're looking into how to make this work. The problem is fairly technical and the different ways Evernote and Markup interact with the PDFs complicates the matter. We're trying to figure out a bridge between the two.

As for PDF Summary we're working on bringing this back in a near future release. It's one of our top features we're working on right now. The removal was more of an issue of how to best present the content, and now that we've got that figured out we're turning back on the code. You'll see that in a release in the not to do distant future.

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Hey all just to let you know we submitted an update to Apple last night which includes a number of bug fixes as well as auto-saving to Evernote (for those that have signed in) and some more controls for meetings. As soon as Apple accepts the submission we'll publish it.

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Maybe this has been suggested for the camera roll access issue, which is hopefully fixed in the next release (along with having the PDF editor back! Seriously!) In my case anyway, the camera roll access seemed to be because my camera roll is large, 3500+ photos. I take photos of various things in my classes each day and use Postach.io to post them for parents and absent students. If I save the photos to a different, smaller album, I can access them. Still, please fix this!

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@Luann - Camera fix has been submitted to Apple and we're waiting on their approval for release. As soon as they review and approve we'll release to the store.

PDF is working its way through the process. We made a lot of changes under the hood for Skitch 3.0 so PDF is a little tricker to bring back in a way that makes sense. We're working on bringing it back in a way that doesn't present a strange experience for users. In the mean time I'd suggest using Markup inside of Evernote to handle your PDFs.

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I don't object to the new layout in Skitch 3, but the loss of the library is critical. I don't often need to go back to images I marked up a while ago, but do often need to go back to ones I created only minutes ago, to correct something, or make it appropriate to a new recipient, etc, and I can't. Does your "only 4%" include those of us who never went outside the iOS Skitch library? Many of us do that, because we can't use syncing anyway with the original desktop Skitch, that being the only version that's even close to useable for those who built up a workflow using it.

I worry about companies who think it's OK to destroy the workflow of any percentage of their users without offering an alternative that doesn't feel like being held to ransom. Do you really think it's acceptable to tell those people that they're nothing more than an insignificant number and will be discarded?

Worse still, I can't even work out how to access my camera roll albums. It always opens with one of them, and as far as I can see there's simply no way to change album. If there is, it's extremely well hidden. How do I do that?

I think in general we have to accept that Skitch is now just a way for Evernote to sell more accounts. It used to be an exceptionally useful tool on its own, even for those of us who have no use for Evernote and/or are already committed to another cloud storage offering. Now, unless you have an Evernote account, AND are happy to wade through the bloat that Evernote is when you don't have a use for it, Skitch is fatally crippled.

I do give credit to Evernote for bringing Skitch to the iPad of course, but they did so with complete contempt for the workflows of previous OSX Skitch users, and now appear to be doing the same with Skitch iOS.

All I want is a useable Skitch on desktop and iPad, without being forced to take on a whole other system I have no use for. I'm perfectly willing to pay for it, but it seems very unlikely that it'll ever happen

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@Southdowns, regarding the Camera Roll issue, Skitch update 3.0.2 was just released which gives you the option to browse through and select a specific photo from your collection. The image dashboard now shows a few of your most recent photos and screenshots for quick access, and at the bottom of this list is a "Photo Library" option where you can navigate through your albums and photo streams.

I understand there are some users that may want to use Skitch without Evernote. Starting with Skitch 3.0, your images are actually saved and sent as rich Skitch images (not flat images); the annotations will remain editable as long as the image hasn't been altered by the share method (MMS might shrink it for example). If you'd prefer, you could always save the image to your Camera Roll and use your device's storage as a library, or mail the image to yourself. In either case, the Skitch annotations will remain editable for future editing in Skitch iOS. Hopefully this has a place in your workflow.

That said, also consider that our latest update introduced the option to automatically save to Evernote. With this feature, your Skitch notes are conveniently stored in Evernote after each successful save. There are a hundred different ways you can use Skitch, but in my opinion, Skitch works best when paired with Evernote!

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Thanks re the photo library issue. As it happens my ipad automatically updated Skitch an hour ago, so now I see how it works.

Yes, I agree that Skitch does work best when paired with Evernote, but why should I have to buy that JUST to get a fully featured Skitch, when 99% of Evernote is completely useless to me (and I have tried to love it)? Surely you can see that for those of us who loved Skitch and hoped for it to be developed more, all we see is a desktop app that was completely destroyed in an extremely arrogant manner (your claims to be adding wonderful new features when all you were doing was putting a few back that you'd destroyed was the proof of that), a complete misunderstanding of what it was used for, and an attempt to force people who neither need nor want it to buy an Evernote account.

Why can't I just buy Skitch, have the original full core functionality, and have it useable across platforms without Evernote? Why can't it integrate with Evernote in added value ways that make people want both, rather than being crippled at a core level unless I agree to pay the ransom?

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@Southdowns - Hey I'd like to address a few of your concerns, and am happy to take your feedback.

As you can see with the 3.0.2 update we've added back auto-saving to Evernote and have fixed the issues with the photo library in order to address the bug and make sure you've got full access to your library of images.

With Skitch 3.0 we've decided to take Skitch in a new direction which is to say we've decided to let Skitch be Skitch. Skitch 3.0 for iOS is the first example of this that will eventually be rolled out across all platforms. The idea is to make Skitch much more focused on letting you markup images and be a part of your workflow rather than impede it.

Part of this change means emphasizing, changing, or even removing features that we don't deliver very well, or aren't adding value to what we are trying to accomplish. The Library view on iOS was one of those features. Our user data didn't show it getting heavy use (vast majority of users don't use the library to re-annotate) and we had lost of qualitative feedback from people telling us they didn't want to be directed to save to Evernote. So we made the decision to remove it and instead let Evernote be an option for saving, but not the only option. In fact over time we're considering adding more options to saving as well.

And most importantly right now, both Skitch iOS and Mac default save all images as rich PNGs which means you can save anywhere you want and still re-open and annotate the images.

The other reason we removed the library was we saw it as an impediment to allowing iOS users to move quickly and communicate quickly about a marked up image. This is especially true of iOS handhelds. We are looking at different approaches for Mac and potentially iPad since each of those have different workflows then a handheld device.

Finally Skitch is usable across all platforms for free, and in fact we've given users even more options. By adding Markup into Evernote (all platforms (iOS, Mac, & Android) and Windows is coming) can annotate an image (and PDF) either from the original source or started in Skitch and dropped into Evernote, or saved to Evernote from Skitch iOS. Or you can use Skitch (all platforms) to open up the rich image and re-annotate.

Nothing is stopping you from marking up a image, or using Evernote's free service for sync across devices, or saving to the default device and using another method. The only pay feature is PDF markup which is a new feature we introduced earlier this year and remains a premium feature which does require an Evernote Premium account, or as an in-app purchase on Android.

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I agree with Southdowns. The best incarnation of Skitch remains the version prior to being bought over by Evernote. Having markups synced to Evernote horrified me for a few weeks, but I eventually accepted it as a necessary evil. And then the abomination that was v3.0 happened.

Here are my suggestions for improvement, which would probably get ignored. They apply only to Skitch on iOS as I don't use the desktop version:

1. Reinstate local storage as per the pre-Evernote days. Make it an in-app purchase, if that's what it takes. Then give us the option to sync to Evernote.

2. Users should have the option to select a default Evernote folder in the current version. I don't want my Skitches getting saved all over the place! My first choice is always local storage within the app and at a distant second, the Skitch folder in Evernote.

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I first want to jump in and say thanks to the Skitch team for making a great app. Most of the time on these forums, you only hear the complaints. I am one of the people who really really likes the new direction for Skitch. While 3.0 isn't 100% how I would make it, I'm grateful for the innovation of a free app that I use a lot.

The other reason we removed the library was we saw it as an impediment to allowing iOS users to move quickly and communicate quickly about a marked up image. This is especially true of iOS handhelds. We are looking at different approaches for Mac and potentially iPad since each of those have different workflows then a handheld device.

This to me is the best thing that has been said in this forum. I miss PDF markup on my iPad, but never really used skitch on my iPhone at all because it was too complex and had too many unnecessary features. I've already used 3.0 on my iPhone more than I used 2.x since its release. Taking different approaches for different platforms is great. I'd love to see PDF come back on iPad at some point, but it's not a dealbreaker. I also would love this new direction to continue into the Mac app. Being able to choose what I save to my Evernote account and not having an unorganized list of everything I've marked up would be great.

Thanks to you Joe, and the whole Skitch team for making a great product.

3

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@Joe, thanks for your reply, but it think you've missed the point. Back in the days before Evernote bought Skitch, we had a fantastically usefull, stunningly well thought out app on the Mac, and just needed it to be extended across platforms, little more.

Then along come Evernote, and we get cross platform, but at the expense of the app. Seriously Joe, you need to sit with an "old school" Skitch user for a while, to understand what it is we've lost; something that was SO good that I always said I'd never switch back to Windows, no matter how good it got, because I couldn't imagine working without Skitch. And then you did it such an incredibly arrogant way, with zero recognition of the fact that you'd destroyed people's workflows overnight, that you lost any chance of retaining any goodwill.

And I'm afraid it continues! You say above that pdf markup is a new feature you've added - NO IT IS NOT. Pdf markup was always there in Skitch, until YOU removed it. Putting it back, but only if I pay for an Evernote Pro account, is NOT adding a new feature, it's holding an old one to ransom.

Turning to specifics, I see now that I can edit a previous local copy if I've saved it to my camera roll, so in one sense I have what I had before, but surely you can see what a poor substitute it is for the library. Within Skitch I have to wade through all my other images to find my Skitch documents (you don't even create a Skitch album), I have to navigate to it if I've been in a different album last time I used Skitch, and when I use other apps, I'm presented with all my Skitch documents when I don't need to see them.

Out of interest, how do you know how many users who were not big Evernote users used the library? As far as I can see, the only data you can have covers the period when Skitch forced me to sync via Evernote. Does it occur to you that many of us stopped using Skitch at all during that period, precisely BECAUSE of the syncing, so don't appear in your figures? The idea that an app with local storage should not have a library for quick and easy in app management of its files seems to me to be an absolutely basic mistake, and is un intuitive simply because no other app behaves this way.

I'll ask again: why can't I simply have a full featured Skitch, with all the good things it used to do, and pay for that? Why do I have to be forced to have an Evernote account at all? Why, if I want full functionality to I have to pay for a pro account when I don't need or want 99.9% of what it offers?

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Let me just say this: I'm sure Evernote Skitch is a great product for some people. But it is NOT what Skitch was or would have been pre Evernote. If you want to develop an app based on Skitch to enhance Evernote or to serve a different user base, that's great. But why destroy what we had in the process? Why not serve both user groups?

And yes of course I know that the old Skitch is still available, but it's dead in the water as far as future development is concerned, and one day soon we'll find it doesn't work with a new version of OSX. I dread that day, because I'll have to develop a completely new workflow

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Thanks for the feedback. I'll address your points directly, but before I do that I think there's a little confusion and mix up about Skitch pre/post Evernote acquisition and between Mac and iOS. So please bare with me while I explain that.

Before Evernote acquired Skitch, Skitch was a Mac only product. All other platforms were developed post Evernote acquisition with the original team supporting the development. In fact both founders are Evernote employees today with Keith serving as the Lead Designer for Skitch. So whenever we rely on institutional knowledge of what Skitch did or didn't do, or what a feature was for, we have the source to talk to readily available.

Seriously Joe, you need to sit with an "old school" Skitch user for a while, to understand what it is we've lost; something that was SO good that I always said I'd never switch back to Windows, no matter how good it got, because I couldn't imagine working without Skitch. And then you did it such an incredibly arrogant way, with zero recognition of the fact that you'd destroyed people's workflows overnight, that you lost any chance of retaining any goodwill.

I actually spend a lot of time with our users, all of them from all walks of life and who have been with our product from the start including those who are brand new. As the Head of Skitch it is my job to make sure to understand what everyone does and doesn't do with Skitch. Since my tenure (12 mos now) we have grown the entire Skitch population quite a lot, and from the time pre-acquisition (Mac only) till now (All major platforms plus Markup inside of Evernote), we have grown by significant factor (~20X). So, we do talk to lots of users. In fact I'd be happy to talk to you if you are an active user and can share specific constructive feedback with me (I'll PM you with details about setting up a call).

We don't mean to come of arrogant, and in fact Keith wrote up a great blog post earlier this year about how we made some mistakes and were going to make changes (which we did). And we continue to make changes to our products in an attempt to improve them for all of our millions of Skitch and Markup users. We are doing our best to make sure we keep everyone happy, but understand some people won't like some changes.

You say above that pdf markup is a new feature you've added - NO IT IS NOT.

Just to be accurate here I walked over to Keith and asked him about this again and he reminded me that while Skitch Mac 1.0 allowed you to open a single page PDF, it did not support multi-page PDF annotation. In fact opening a single page was a bit of a happy accident. It wasn't really meant to do that. No other platform of Skitch ever supported multi-page PDF and if they did open a single page that was an accident, not intentional. That said when we did add in full PDF support we added in a lot more than single page annotation. We included multi-page support, summary, email summary, and more. And we're continuing to look at more ways to add value to PDF. Skitch iOS 2.5 was the first to introduce multi-page PDF with all of the options.

Turning to specifics, I see now that I can edit a previous local copy if I've saved it to my camera roll, so in one sense I have what I had before, but surely you can see what a poor substitute it is for the library. Within Skitch I have to wade through all my other images to find my Skitch documents (you don't even create a Skitch album), I have to navigate to it if I've been in a different album last time I used Skitch, and when I use other apps, I'm presented with all my Skitch documents when I don't need to see them.

You are correct that Skitch 1.x iOS did have a limited library view. This was changed in 2.x and removed completely in 3.x. Again the reason we removed it in 3.x is when we were looking at Skitch and trying to figure out what the future of the product was going to be, we had to ask ourselves what the purpose of Skitch really is. Sitting in a room with Keith, we came to the realization (after looking at a lot of user data) that Skitch as a whole should be about Capture->Markup->Send. We're a flow in your workflow, but not the workflow.

So things like Library felt like a bump to us since there are far better tools out there that handle this functionality better than Skitch. In fact Keith and I were just discussing how we could bring back a concept of a "Library" which would really be more of a "Recent documents" since really again we're not the best tool when it comes to document management. Evernote, OS X, Dropbox, etc are all far better at storing and managing files then Skitch. So we while we might add something back (particularly for iPad and Mac) it would most likely not be a full document manager since that's not our area of expertise.

Out of interest, how do you know how many users who were not big Evernote users used the library? As far as I can see, the only data you can have covers the period when Skitch forced me to sync via Evernote. Does it occur to you that many of us stopped using Skitch at all during that period, precisely BECAUSE of the syncing, so don't appear in your figures?

We actually have a great deal of data that stretches back quite far. We analyze usage data all the time to understand what colors are popular, how tools are used. We use both quantitative as well as qualitative methods to gather this information. We also have Keith working with us and he's the best source of all things Skitch.

Also your hypothesis might be correct. Some people may have stopped using the app, but there are lots of Skitch users and we've never dropped to zero, so we have lots of data over a long time to pour over and look at how users use Skitch. Trust me when I say, we don't make any of these decisions without a lot of thought, analysis, and discussion. In the case of Skitch iOS 3.0 the design started back in the spring and since then we've gone through dozens of design prototypes, lots of user testing (on all aspects), beta testing, and so forth in order to build what we felt was a product that started on the path outlined above.

why can't I simply have a full featured Skitch, with all the good things it used to do, and pay for that?

Skitch iOS 3.0 is pretty full featured. We removed a few things that we did not feel fully represented what we want Skitch to be and some underutilized features. Some of these are good decisions and some of these might be bad. Where we make a mistake we'll seek to rectify if it makes sense. A perfect example is adding back rich Skitch images. Skitch 1.x Mac had this and was lost along the way, and now it is back in Skitch Mac, iOS and Android. So feel free to save your files wherever you want and still have then re-editable.

Why do I have to be forced to have an Evernote account at all?

You aren't. You can use Skitch iOS 3.0 without an Evernote account and get access to everything in the app except for saving to Evernote (for obvious reasons). In fact you can chose to not have an Evernote account in any Skitch app. In fact with the latest Evernote clients (except for Windows, which is coming soon) you can now Markup without Skitch, or you can have Skitch be there as part of your workflow. We've given you even more choice.

Why, if I want full functionality to I have to pay for a pro account when I don't need or want 99.9% of what it offers?

Again you don't need a Premium account if you want to use our core products for nearly every single feature. Skitch iOS 3.0 does not stop you from using any feature. The full featured PDF component (again the feature we released above, not the 1 page annotation on the Mac of the past) is a paid for feature because we are an ongoing business. As an ongoing business we have to make money, so while you can use 90% of Skitch for free, there is a small piece that is paid, much like many other apps.

In fact when we bring back PDF, we're going to make some slight design changes, so reading is de-coupled from the annotation and anyone will be able to use Skitch as a PDF reader without a prompt about Premium. We'll also most likely move to the same model we have on Skitch Android (available today) which lets you either be a Premium user and get PDF as part of your subscription, or purchase the annotation capability for a very small charge. All existing Premium users of course will have full access.

I'm sure Evernote Skitch is a great product for some people. But it is NOT what Skitch was or would have been pre Evernote. If you want to develop an app based on Skitch to enhance Evernote or to serve a different user base, that's great. But why destroy what we had in the process? Why not serve both user groups?

You are correct that Skitch today is not what Skitch was, but then very few products ever stay frozen in time. I can't predict what Skitch will be in 10 years from now, but I can predict it won't be what it is today. What I do know is that by having Keith on board and the great team we have working on Skitch and Markup we'll continue to build a product that tries to deliver on our mission while hopefully matching as many of our users needs as possible. We know we can't please everyone, but we do honestly listen and want to build the best product we can.

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I am the biggest sales person of Evernote in my company. I honestly love the family of products and think that they are amazing. It was all going well until in a meeting I opened the Skitch as I always do, and couldn't make up the document we were going to review as a group. I looked all over thinking it was just a change in the UI, but then realized quite a bit of functionality had been removed. No announcement, no heads up. As a person who is currently running a development team I couldn't even imagine stripping out functionality without warning the user.

All that aside, could someone please produce a timeline or even a product path forward to know if the functionality is coming back. I really love all the products that Evernote offers but this one has now become useless to me and many others.

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@Quakeman34 - What functionality are you specifically referring to? What kind of document?

When Skitch 3.0 launched we posted to our blog, updated the store description, release notes, posted an announcement, added an update welcome screen and more. Is there a specific channel that you use to get information about updates? Is there a channel we're not using that you frequent?

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Skitch iOS 3.0 is iOS 7 only and takes advantage of new iOS 7 features

A new brand and look for Skitch

We've added a streamlined mode that lets you take a snap make quick common annotations and send it along

We've redesigned the flow so you only need to login when you save to Evernote

You can now open pictures from your local photo roll, stream, or from your clipboard

New toolbar design that lets you focus on your content. Drag your fingers along the menus to use Skitch with one hand

Add captions to help explain your image

Send to meeting attendees. Skitch detects what meetings your in and lets you send annotations to attendees.

Tons of bug fixes

Where in there does it say anything at all about removing stuff that people rely on? Add to that auto update in iOS and the fact that people simply don't expect key features to be removed, and it's just plain unacceptable.

The library removal (I don't know when that was done, but it was), is a complete and utter train wreck. It turns out that once I've created something in Skitch, there is no way at all to go back to it on my iPad to edit it UNLESS I remember to save it to my camera roll. It wouldn't be quite so bad, though not far off, if it at least saved to the camera roll by default, whereas in fact it's a manual export function.

A key, absolutely core feature of the iPad is that documents belong to apps, so that's where you expect to find them. There IS NO NEED FOR A SAVE PROCESS in any other app I've ever come across. You have single handedly broken that, and added no benefit at all in return.

Yes I can save to Evernote, but that's no damn good because I can't then get the doc out of Evernote on my iPad to edit it.

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Yes I can save to Evernote, but that's no damn good because I can't then get the doc out of Evernote on my iPad to edit it.

This bit was unfair as you CAN use mark-up in Evernote on the iPad. However, earlier Joe said:

"We're still trying to judge how many people want Skitch to do PDF annotations vs. using Markup in Evernote."

Everyone who has no use for Evernote I'd assume, me included. You keep removing stuff from Skitch with the apparent justification that it's bloat to keep it in if only some people's workflow will be destroyed, yet are wondering whether to just leave pdf markup in Evernote and not Skitch? There can be no greater bloat than having to have the whole of Evernote, including a pro account, just to be able to mark up pdf's using Skitch tools.

Can I please just have and pay for a fully functional Skitch. If you then want to take that technology and integrate it into Evernote, great, and I'm sure Evernote fans will love it, but there must be a huge market out there consisting of people who don't like and can't use everything buckets, like me.